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    ‘The Creator’ Review: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love A.I.

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    In this hectic, futuristic action film, John David Washington hunts down a threatening artificial intelligence with the baby face of a child.It’s been a tough year for artificial intelligence. First, industry leaders warn that A.I. poses an extinction-level threat to humanity. Then, screenwriters and actors warn roughly the same thing about artists losing their livelihoods (and art losing its soul). And let’s not forget predictions of vast unemployment and upheaval. What’s a superintelligent, terrifyingly autonomous technology got to do to get back on people’s good sides?One answer comes in the whirlwind form of “The Creator,” the latest film directed by Gareth Edwards (“Rogue One,” “Godzilla”). We’ve grown accustomed to A.I. playing the role of helper-turned-villain in movies, and here a rapid newsreel-style prologue sets a familiar stage: Robots were invented, did increasingly complex tasks, and then went nuclear (devastating, in this case, Los Angeles). Now the United States is bent on eliminating their threat, while in East Asian countries (dubbed “New Asia”), bots live at peace with humans. Humanlike robots with Roomba-like heads are police officers, workers, even (somewhat jarringly) saffron-robed monks.One thing stays the same in the future: The movies need a hero. John David Washington plays the reluctant man for the job, Joshua, an ex-undercover soldier who dropped out of sight after a messy raid separated him from his pregnant wife, Maya (Gemma Chan). He is recruited for a U.S. military mission, led by Allison Janney as a no-nonsense colonel, to neutralize a top-secret weapon in New Asia. After a macho fly-in that lightly evokes Vietnam War movies (but with a Radiohead soundtrack), he infiltrates an underground lab only to find a mysterious weapon: an A.I. with the human form of a fairly unflappable 6-year-old girl. Joshua decides to take her on the lam, naming her Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).Unlike countless A.I. doomsday scenarios, Alphie is too cute and innocent for Joshua to treat as a military target. He’s drawn to protecting her, though unnerved by her near-telekinetic powers of jamming technology all around her. Her personhood is the sort of conundrum posed with daunting depth in, for example, Spielberg’s millennium masterpiece “A.I.” or more outré films like “Demon Seed.” But here Alphie’s significance functions like a warm-and-fuzzy halo above all the gunfire and explosions: What if A.I. isn’t out to get us? What if it just wants to live and let live?Posing these questions requires doing a little heavy lifting on behalf of the film, which is busy spurring on the hectic pursuit of Alphie and Joshua (by, among others, Ken Watanabe as a dogged A.I. “simulant”). Edwards (who wrote the screenplay with Chris Weitz) fluently integrates images and ideas from our established cinematic vocabulary for thinking about A.I. But despite the impressively sweeping C.G.I. running battles in Thai fields or seaside settlements, or the gritty “Blade Runner”-lite interludes in crowded metropolises, the story’s engine produces the straightforward momentum of your average action blockbuster — one thing happens, then the next thing, complete with punchy (sometimes tin-eared) one-liners.Still, tech eye candy can go a long way in science fiction. Humanlike robots like Alphie have elegant circular portals where their ears would be. Nomad, the massive spaceship that the United States uses to hunt down artificial intelligence, scans Earth with blue light, like a colossal photocopier. But Washington feels curiously disconnected from the visual set pieces that Edwards builds out, and his character’s increasingly fraught back story with Maya feels scattered across flashbacks. Above all, the film’s tone is uneven: Edwards pushes the relatable ordinariness of the androids and hybrid “simulants,” but the potential menace of A.I. inescapably looms.The film’s matter-of-fact acceptance of A.I. as an innocuous (or indifferent) force in the world is reminiscent of Edwards’s 2014 take on “Godzilla.” The monsters in that movie weren’t bad per se; they were just creatures independent of humans. This is more or less the case made for A.I. in “The Creator”: autonomy without tears (or bloodshed). It’s a provocative idea — all A.I. wants from humans is a little love — but that utopia doesn’t compute.The CreatorRated PG-13 for violent havoc. Running time: 2 hours 13 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Review: In ‘To Leslie,’ an Unflinching Working-Class Elegy

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      The small-budget indie is a complex portrait of the ways that trauma and addiction haunt an alcoholic mother, and her family, in the South.In gritty detail, “To Leslie” traces the fall of a one-time lottery winner who, years later, has lost everything she holds dear. The British actress Andrea Riseborough (“Nancy”) gives a deft performance as Leslie, an alcoholic mother in West Texas barreling toward rock bottom in this deceptively simple yet heart-wrenching character study.Allison Janney, Marc Maron, Owen Teague and Andre Royo fill out the solid ensemble cast in this small-budget indie, which accomplishes what its bigger-budget peer “Hillbilly Elegy” wanted to, but couldn’t pull off: a complex portrait of the ways in which trauma and addiction haunt a working-class white family in the South.The director, Michael Morris, knows from the start what movie he’s making: one that robs us of our easy assumptions about who Leslie is. She’s unbearably flawed, and the screenwriter Ryan Binaco explains why without forcing long beats of exposition upon the viewer. And he does so while still leaving room for surprise. Leslie doesn’t tank her sobriety when we think she will, yet her recovery is free of narrative subterfuge.The cinematography by Larkin Seiple (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”) is a real feat of visual character development: The camera movement is both protective of Leslie and unflinching in its raw portrayal of her vulnerability. Some of the most affecting shots take place at the bar, like one close-up where Leslie spars with the guy who wants to bed her — “Tell me I’m good.” It’s shot with a depth of field that keeps Leslie’s face in focus, while the rest of the frame is blurred.“To Leslie” probably could have left 15 more minutes on the cutting room floor. But its intermittent lags don’t diminish the overall satisfaction one feels in the film’s final act, when Leslie’s rocky road settles into something believably triumphant.To LeslieRated R for explicit language and violence. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Lou’ Review: Unfinished Business

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      A child’s kidnapping ignites a protracted bid for redemption in this down-and-dirty thriller.Whatever else one might say about the Netflix thriller “Lou,” making it must have been murder. Pummeled by near-constant rain, soaked in swampy mud and battered by frequent bouts of hand-to-hand combat, the movie’s headliners look to have suffered miserably.Consequently, my admiration for Allison Janney, already high, skyrocketed. As the formidable title character, a woman of indeterminate vintage commonly accessorized with shovel, rifle or deer carcass, Janney leaves spry in the dust. Unfazed either by the working conditions or by Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley’s ridiculously over-the-top screenplay, she lends her grouchy character more than a ramrod spine and steely stare: She gives her a woundedness that keeps us watching long after this prolix quest for redemption should have reached its preordained conclusion.When the plot — a dense weave of familial pain and political misdeeds — requires Lou to leave her cabin in the Pacific Northwest and help a young mother (Jurnee Smollett) reclaim her abducted preteen daughter, Lou barely hesitates. Abandoning her careful plans for a final exit, she takes off through a storm-lashed forest on the trail of the kidnapper, distraught mother in tow. The journey will be filled with perils and flashbacks, regrets and secrets as Lou excavates her past; yet the director, Anna Foerster — who, aside from the instantly forgettable “Underworld: Blood Wars” (2017), has worked mostly in television — pays greater attention to the movie’s impressive fight choreography than to the details of its central mystery.Methodically violent and more than a little silly, “Lou” delivers a kick in the head to ageism. When did you last hear an arthritic heroine warn a woman half her age not to slow her down?LouRated R for knives, fists, bullets and a lethal tin can. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Breaking News in Yuba County’ Review: Lampooning Suburbia

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Breaking News in Yuba County’ Review: Lampooning Suburbia“Awkwafina head-butts Wanda Sykes” could be a satisfactory one-sentence recap of this movie.Allison Janney in “Breaking News in Yuba County.”Credit…Anna Kooris/American International PicturesFeb. 11, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETBreaking News in Yuba CountyDirected by Tate TaylorComedy, Crime, Drama, ThrillerR1h 36mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.In the 2020 comedy “Lazy Susan,” the superb actress Allison Janney strove mightily to make a credible character out of what, as written, was a glib, nasty caricature and the centerpiece of a facile lampoon of suburbia. Janney now stars in “Breaking News in Yuba County,” which gives one the sinking feeling that Janney actually likes starring in facile lampoons of suburbia.Here Janney plays Sue Buttons, a housewife who likes to spend her time watching daytime TV and repeating affirmations that were already stale joke material by the time they made “Stuart Saves His Family” (that was 1995). Her husband (Matthew Modine) is involved in money-laundering; when he meets with a farcical mishap, she sees an opportunity to find fame, all the while in ignorance of a big bag of money that she, in a sense, has inherited from her spouse.[embedded content]Early on, this Mississippi-shot story leans in the direction of a warm-weather “Fargo.” It is replete with big names playing nasty characters doing ugly things. “Awkwafina head-butts Wanda Sykes” could be a satisfactory one-sentence recap of the picture.Only there’s more, and it’s worse. People who believe that the “Fargo” creators Joel and Ethan Coen hold their characters in contempt ought to have a look at this. It’s how contempt is really done, only at a much lower level of wit and intelligence.One may wonder how Tate Taylor, who has overseen high-profile, conventional, ostensibly respectable Hollywood product like “The Girl on the Train” and “The Help,” came to direct this amoral, repellent bag of sick, a movie whose biggest ambition in life is to start a bidding war at a late 1990s Sundance Film Festival and then bomb at the box office. Call it water finding its own level, maybe.Breaking News in Yuba CountyRated R for “repellent” (actually language, violence, brief nudity). Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More